Companies and brands have significantly increased their social media spends even as they find it challenging to measure the effectiveness of their social media engagements according to EY’s second annual Social Media Marketing India Trends Study. “About 90% of organizations reached out to in this study are planning to spend as much as 15% of their annual marketing budget exclusively on social media, up from 78% organizations in 2013.”

The second edition of the study focused on current and emerging social media platforms, how companies evaluate, strategize and deploy investments in social media, how social-savvy brands measure success and the outlook of social media marketing. “About 23% respondents stated that their social media budgets were in excess of INR 1 million per annum and 14% of the brands spent INR 10-20 million on social media in 2014.”

The report also states that, “There was a decline in the number of brands that spent in excess of INR 20 million from 17.1% in 2013 to 14.3% in 2014 indicating that brands are exceedingly cautious on the returns and are optimizing spends”.

Listed below are the nine crucial findings of the report that every marketer should bookmark.

1. In 2014, community building is no more the primary reason for brands to be present on social media but it is brand awareness

2. 90% of companies surveyed spend up to 15% of their annual marketing budget exclusively on Social Media (up from 78% in 2013)

3. One-third of the brands surveyed in 2014 post onto their platforms once a day, and another 43% post updates more often

4. Average response time of 30 min or less were recorded by 38% of brands in 2014 (compared to average response times stated by 25% brands for Facebook and 28% of brands in 2013).

5. 57% of survey respondents launched their brands on a new platform, conducted integrated 360 campaigns and defined new success metrics

6. Identifying and reaching out to the right target audience on social media continues to be the top-most challenge for Indian brands, followed by monetary constraints

7. Engagement (94% of brands surveyed), Social Reach (89%) and Visitor Growth Rate (72%) stand out as important metrics tracked by most social media-savvy brands

8. Close to 70% of all companies, that said they use social listening tools, admitted to having a better understanding of how their brand is perceived in the social media universe

9. Brands surveyed stated that they are looking to introduce Social CRM and Social Commerce as priority items on their social media agenda, followed by customised ads/campaigns and gamification